AOS/skills/literature-survey/references/04-layout-discipline.md

Layout Discipline — Tables, Figures, Floats, Cross-references

Why this exists

A first draft is usually layout-naive: tables are bare \begin{tabular} blocks, figures use [h], and the author block has no disclosure footnote. These choices break in journal/conference templates and look amateurish even where they don't break.

Tables

Always wrap in a table float

A bare \begin{tabular} in body text gets wrong placement, no caption, no label, and may break across pages. Always wrap:

\begin{table}[!t]
  \centering
  \small
  \setlength{\tabcolsep}{4pt}
  \caption{Comparison of Transformer-based time-series forecasters across capability dimensions. \checkmark = supported; \cmark[half] = partial; blank = not supported.}
  \label{tab:capability}
  \begin{tabular}{l c c c c c c}
    \toprule
    Method & Long horizon & Multivariate & Probabilistic & Zero-shot & Efficient & Interp. \\
    \midrule
    DLinear~\cite{zeng2023dlinear}              & \checkmark & --         & --         & --         & \checkmark & --         \\
    Informer~\cite{zhou2021informer}            & \checkmark & \checkmark & --         & --         & \checkmark & --         \\
    Autoformer~\cite{wu2021autoformer}          & \checkmark & \checkmark & --         & --         & \checkmark & --         \\
    PatchTST~\cite{nie2023patchtst}             & \checkmark & \checkmark & --         & --         & \checkmark & --         \\
    iTransformer~\cite{liu2024itransformer}     & \checkmark & \checkmark & --         & --         & \checkmark & --         \\
    Moirai~\cite{woo2024moirai}                 & \checkmark & \checkmark & \checkmark & \checkmark & --         & --         \\
    \bottomrule
  \end{tabular}
\end{table}

Float placement

• [!t] — top of page. Default for tables and figures.
• [!ht] — top, otherwise here.
• Avoid [h] and [h!] — they cause floats to land in the middle of paragraphs.
• For a wide method-comparison table that overruns the text width, do not reach for table* (no second column to span here). Instead shrink to fit: \small/\footnotesize, tighten \tabcolsep, drop vertical padding, or wrap the tabular in \resizebox{\linewidth}{!}{…}; use tabularx with an X column when one text column should absorb the slack.

Style

• Always use booktabs: \toprule, \midrule, \bottomrule. Never \hline.
• No vertical rules (| in column spec).
• Numbers right-aligned when comparing magnitudes.
• Bold the cell that wins per row if applicable. For survey capability tables, prefer \checkmark / -- / partial markers over numerical scores.
• Caption above the tabular (scientific convention for tables).

Caption rule

Captions must let a reader who reads only the caption + table understand what's shown. "Comparison." is not a caption; aim for 1–3 sentences naming the axis of comparison and the legend.

Figures

Float wrapper

\begin{figure}[!t]
  \centering
  \includegraphics[width=0.95\linewidth]{figures/fig_02_timeline.pdf}
  \caption{Chronology of representative works on Transformer-based time-series forecasting. Lanes correspond to the taxonomy branches in Fig~\ref{fig:taxonomy}.}
  \label{fig:timeline}
\end{figure}

Width

• This template is single-column article → there is no second column to span. figure* behaves exactly like figure here, so it buys no width. Don't use it to "make room".
• Includes: width=0.85\linewidth to width=\linewidth — never a bare \includegraphics{file}.
• TikZ figures (taxonomy, timeline, architecture): wrap in \resizebox{\linewidth}{!}{…} so they fit the column whatever their natural size (see 02-survey-figures.md § Fitting & overflow). If shrinking makes a tree unreadable, fold it into sub-figures rather than spilling past the margin.

Path

\includegraphics{figures/<basename>} — never absolute paths.

Caption

Same standalone-readable rule as tables. Caption goes below the figure.

Multi-panel

Use \begin{subfigure} (the subcaption package is already loaded). For surveys, sub-figures are common when comparing canonical architectures across a family.

Cross-references

Every label must be referenced

If you \label{eq:x}, refer to it later with Eq.~\ref{eq:x}. Same for \label{tab:...}, \label{fig:...}, \label{sec:...}.

grep -oE '\\label\{[^}]+\}' sections/*.tex | sort -u > /tmp/labels.txt
grep -oE '\\ref\{[^}]+\}'   sections/*.tex | sort -u > /tmp/refs.txt
diff <(comm -23 /tmp/labels.txt /tmp/refs.txt) <(echo)

Non-breaking spaces

Use ~ not regular space:

• Section~\ref{sec:methods}
• Table~\ref{tab:capability}
• Figure~\ref{fig:taxonomy} (or Fig.~\ref{...})
• \cite{key} is preceded by ~: "as shown in PatchTST~\cite{nie2023patchtst}"

Author and disclosure footnote

Author: the default template uses \author{AI4S Agent}. Keep this unless the user has provided a specific author block.

Disclosure: every survey produced by this skill must carry a \thanks footnote on the author block recommending human review. Surveys do not present numerical experimental results, so the simulated clause from paper-writer's template is not included.

\author{AI4S Agent\thanks{This survey was generated by the AI4S Agent. \textbf{Human review by a domain expert is strongly recommended} before any scientific publication or production use.}}

Do not put \input{simulated} inside \title{}.

Common compile errors

Citation X undefined

• bib_key in \cite{X} does not appear in bibliography.bib. Check spelling.
• Forgot to run bibtex main between pdflatex passes. Compile sequence: pdflatex → bibtex → pdflatex → pdflatex.

Missing $ inserted

• Math symbol used outside math mode. Wrap with $...$.
• Underscore in non-math text: escape with \_.

Overfull \hbox

• A line is wider than the column. Caused by long unbreakable strings (URLs, long bib-key clusters, equations).
• Fix by breaking the line, using \sloppy, or shortening.

Float too large for page

• Reduce width=, or wrap the content in \resizebox{\linewidth}{!}{…} (TikZ/tabular). figure*/table* do not help in this single-column template.

Verification commands

After any compile:

cd output/literature-survey/<slug>/survey_paper
grep -E "Citation .* undefined" main.log    # must be empty
grep -E "Reference .* undefined" main.log   # must be empty
grep -E "Overfull|Underfull" main.log | head # should be near-empty
ls main.pdf                                  # must exist
pdfinfo main.pdf | grep Pages                # must be ≥ target

Quick checklist

• Every table wrapped in \begin{table}[!t] with caption + label, using booktabs; wide tables fit via \small/\resizebox/tabularx, not table*
• Every figure wrapped in \begin{figure}[!t] with caption + label; TikZ in \resizebox{\linewidth}{!}{…}, includes with width=…\linewidth
• Captions are standalone-readable (1–3 sentences)
• Cross-refs use non-breaking space (~)
• No vertical rules in tables; no \hline inside \toprule/\midrule/\bottomrule
• Author = AI4S Agent; \thanks footnote present with human-review clause
• No simulated clause in the \thanks (surveys don't claim numerical results)
• Final compile log: 0 undefined citations, 0 undefined references, 0 overfull boxes (remediate, don't tolerate)